Animate better walkthroughs

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Learn how to animate better walkthroughs in SketchUp. In this video, George shows you how to create walkthroughs that animate smoothly and consistently, adding a level of professionalism to your presentations. He also shows you how to animate using markers as guides, as well as how to smoothly animate cameras around corners.

- [George] Hi, I'm George Maestri,and today we're going to do some animation.I'm going to show you some tips and tricksfor making your walkthroughs a little bit more efficient.So here we have a very simple scenewith a mostly empty house.But we're going to do a walkthroughwhere we walk through the front doorand take a turn into the building.So a very simple walkthrough.Now before we get started,remember that this is a walkthrough,it is not a run through, or a crawl through.

So we need to move the camera at a walking pace.Now, for me, I like to use a rateof about six feet per second,or about two meters per second.If you want to, you can go a little bit sloweror a little bit faster,but too much off of thatand it won't look like a walkthrough.So, with that in mind, let's understand firsthow long it's going to take usto get from the sidewalk to the front door.

So I'm going to use my tape measure tool,snap that to the front porch thereand just drag that out to the sidewalk.And as you can see, it's a little bit more than 60 feet.At six feet per second, we've got 10 secondsto get from here to here.Let's go ahead and start animatingand before we do that,I'm going to go into View, Animation, Settings.Now I need to understand the pace of my scene,and so this animation settings here for Scene Transitionsis very important.

Every time I change a scene, it's going to take two seconds.Now by default, SketchUp also has a one second delay,so it will animate the camera for two seconds,stop for a second and then animate again.We don't want that.We want this to be zero.This will give us a continuous walkthrough.And typically, I don't use Scene Delay.If I do want to stop the camera,I can do that using other methods.So let's go ahead and just keep that at two secondswith a zero delay.

And now I'm going to start placing my camera.But where do I place my camera?How do I get my camera to move evenly?Well, I find an easy way to do thatis just to lay down a trail of cookie crumbs, or markers.So I'm going to create a very simple objectand just use that as a markerwhere I can snap the camera to.I'm just going to draw out a simple circleand then pull that up into a short cylinder.Select that and then I wanted to put thison a separate layer, I don't want these to show upin my final animation.

So I'm going to go ahead and just add a layer here.We'll call that Markers,and then I'm going to select thisand under Entity Info, I'm going to make surethat this all is on the Markers layer.And then let's go ahead and just make that into a group.So now that I have this group,I can position that first marker on the sidewalk,somewhere around there.So this is where my camera's going to startand then it's going to go to the front door.

So again, I'm going to select this,but this time I'm going to hold down the control keyand drag it up to that front porch,so somewhere around the center of that front door,somewhere around there.Now remember, this is going to take 10 seconds,so I only have two markers here,I need a couple of more.I'm going to actually type /4and that will multiply those markers by four.So now I have the original plus one, two, three, four morefor a total of five and at two seconds per camera,I have 10 seconds to get to the front door.

So now that we have these in place,I can start to snap my camera to the markersand hopefully my camera will move very smoothlytowards that front door.Now we're going to start animatingand playing with our scenes.The first thing that we need to dois add in a scene and place our camera.I'm going to go into the large tool set hereand I'm going to use Position Camera.Now there's also a menu option for that if you wantand then, just position it on the centerof that little hockey puck or cookie crumbor whatever you want to call itand then, position my camera.

So this is my first shot hereand once I get this in place,I can just right click over thisand update that scene.Now I have my first camera placed,add a scene and I'm going to go aheadand just use my hand toolto get a view of the second little hockey puck here.Again, snap to it and position it.Now I'm trying to get through this front door,so one of the things I'm looking at,is that I'm looking at the linegoing down this path through the front doorand so I'm trying to get thatpretty consistent between cameras.

Now we may have to adjust this a little bit later,but I'm trying to get it consistent as we go.So let's go ahead and do update,so now I'm going from this camera to this camera,going to add in another camera and position that,so this is the third one.Again, position that doorso that we're kind of doing a straight shot through it.

And then, once we have this, we can just keep going.So I'm going to go into Scene 4 here,position on that fourth marker.Again, make sure my camera's where I want it,update, and let's do one more.We're going to need to see that marker,so I'm just using my pan tool to get off of it.Now I want to make sure that I'm actually on the ground here,so I'm going to make sure I snaptowards the bottom of this one.

And as you can see,we're getting very close to that front door.So there's going to be a little bit more that we're going to doonce we go through that front door,but for now I'm just going to update this scene.So now that we have this,we can do a quick play to see what it looks like.So View, Animation, Play.Now what I'm looking at here,is I'm looking at the position of that front door.So I'm going to put my mouse hereand as you can see, it's pretty centered,so this is good.

Now that we have this, we can go to the next scene.I'm going to double click on Scene 5.Now we have to go through the doorand make a right turn.Now in order to do this,I'm actually going to go aheadand just zoom out here with my camera.I'm actually going to also go into Layersand we're going to hide the roof of the house for right now,so that way we can kind of see inside.What I'm looking at here, is I'm looking atwhere my next marker is going to be placed,so I'm going to go ahead and move that,and as you can see, I'm just trying to get thissomewhere around the inside of that front door,but I also want it to be reasonably equidistant here.

Now, as we start to turn,we will have a little bit of slowing down,so that's not that big of a problem.I'm going to go ahead and move one more of these in.And again, I'm looking at this distance,so I want to make sure that these distances are fairly equal.Now that we have this, let's go into our Position Camera.And I'm going to create a new scene here, Scene 6,and let's go ahead and drop that camera in on the marker.

And we're going to turn right,so I need to make sure that the camera is turning right.And let's do an update scene.This is where it starts to get a little bit tricky.I need to make sure that I go from here, to here,to here, smoothly.Now one of the things I findis that as you go through things like doors,you want the camera to start turningbefore it actually starts moving.

The scene here, I'm actually going to go aheadand start to move that door a little bit overand update that scene.And this will help to smooth out this transition.If I go from here,to here,to here, you'll notice that it's much, much smoother.So let's add one more scene inand take a look at what we've got.So again, I'm just trying to find that marker on the floor.

Place my camera on the marker,and let's say we're about to go down this hallway,and update the scene.So now, let's go ahead to the start.And in fact, I'm going to go aheadand just save out an animation at this point.So I'm going to go File, Export, Animation, Video.And I'm going to go into my ExerciseFiles folder here.And let's just call this Walkthroughs.mp4.So I'm going to export thatand then we're going to take a look at it.

So now I've gone ahead and saved out my animationand here it is as an mp4 file.Going to go ahead and play it.And as you can see, the motion through the front dooris very smooth, we make a very nice turn hereand then this last little bitmaybe needs a little bit of work,but generally, it's pretty good.So hopefully, this gives you some insightinto how to properly space and timeyour walkthrough sequences.

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Author

Updated

3/14/2018

Released

3/1/2017

Discover how to use SketchUp more effectively. In this weekly course, George Maestri covers a wide variety of topics and shares tips that can help you use this powerful application to efficiently and quickly create detailed 3D models. Tune in and start boosting your SketchUp skills.

Skill Level Intermediate

6h 15m

Duration

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